“You must be really fun at Christmas,” I couldn’t help but say, and Lily opened one eye to look at me, then burst out laughing.
“I can see why you brought her, the American. She is funny! All right, the gift is very useful to me. I will take it. In reply, I will give you the information that you seek. There is a pizza place on Rivington Street in Shoreditch. It does not look like much, but if you go there today you will find a man who will lead you to the answers you seek. He will lead you to the people who have your vials. However, as I am certain that even the pizza shop on Rivington Street has other customers, you will need to know how to recognize him. For that, I give you the following clue: three, six, nine.”
“Hold on,” I said. “You can’t just give us a clue about the guy. Violet just gave you something for the information.”
“Yes, and information is only worthy to those with the intelligence to make something of it,” Lily replied, and for the first time since the conversation started, her eyes flashed with anger. “Too many of the imbeciles who come to see me think that by giving me money, or power, that I should spell out for them what they want. No. The world should belong to those who can think. I have the luxury of being able to decide who receives what information from me. So I give it in riddles. Those who are intelligent enough, deserving enough of the information will find what they want. The others will flounder. It is nothing more than natural selection.”
“Natural selection in which you play God.”
“Oh, I am not so arrogant as that, Cassie,” Lily said to me with a smile. “I am more like the pope. I dole out the information, I do not create it myself.”
“That’s much better,” I replied, rolling my eyes. There was something about Lily that I didn’t like. She was so calm and collected on the outside, but there was a hardness to her that made me uncomfortable. I could see where the name the Black Widow came from. It wasn’t just her dark hair and eyes; her entire soul was dark.
“Is being the pope not the far better option? When you see a woman whose child is dying of cancer, she does not blame the pope. She blames God. And yet the pope is the supposed mouthpiece of this non-existent God. He has all of God’s information, and yet takes none of the abuse or blame for God’s actions.”
“We did not come here for a philosophical discussion of your narcissism,” Violet told Lily. “Thank you for the information. I will see you again, hopefully when you are in jail.”
With that Violet turned and left, and I did the same.
“You’ve wished for that for a long time little sister, but it will never happen,” Lily sang after us. It took all my willpower not to stop and turn around. Suddenly everything made sense. Why Lily had the same ability to deduce things as Violet.
“Little sister? You mean to tell me this Black Widow, the queen of crime in England, is your sister?” I asked Violet.
“You did not see it until now? I would have expected you to.”
“I guess I didn’t really expect a master criminal to be related to you.”
“Why not? I am extremely good at what I do, but it is only my choice to play for the ‘good guys’,” Violet said, using air quotes. “If I were to become a criminal, I would be very good at it. It makes sense that a close relative of mine would have chosen that path instead.”
“You have the craziest family and I only know two of you.”
“Everyone’s family is crazy.”
“My mom works as a receptionist, goes to the gym three times a week and likes to gossip with the ladies at church on the weekend. I’m an unemployed former student whose exciting Saturday nights usually involve snuggling up with my cat, a glass of wine and a good book. Your sister is a criminal mastermind that you just had to bribe with a Fabergé egg to give you information on the theft of Ebola vials. You are a consulting detective who picks and chooses which cases you want to work, you commit crimes in order to solve them, I often wake up wondering if someone’s going to try to kill you today, and your closest neighbor is an old woman who I’m sure used to be involved in crime and watches over your house with an Uzi. I think your family takes the cake for crazy, and I don’t even know what your parents do. How on earth did you even get a Fabergé egg to give your sister, anyway? Those things cost like, twenty million pounds or something, don’t they?”
“It was a gift,” Violet replied simply.
“Normal people don’t get priceless jewellery as gifts.”
“Fine. I solved a problem for a Russian diplomat in his home country a few years ago. Believe me; the solution I came up with has made him far more than twenty million pounds in profit.”
“Still doesn’t make you a normal person. That’s a really nice thing to give away for just a bit of information, though,” I told her, and Violet shrugged.
“Lily has always been quite partial to shiny things. Even as a child, she used to dress herself in our mother’s jewellery. The egg means nothing to me, so it was simple to give it to her as the bribe.”
“Speaking of, I guess we’re going to Shoreditch?” I asked. “We have to find whoever three, six, nine is supposed to refer to.”
“Yes,” Violet nodded. “That is the next step indeed. We will see where this takes us.”
Chapter 12
Luigi’s Pizza wasn’t exactly a high-class establishment. In the middle of a narrow, empty street, the store directly across from Luigi’s was shuttered for good. A flickering neon sign in the window that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since I was in high school announced that the store was open, and I pushed open the door.
Of course, I wasn’t exactly one to judge a place by its looks. As a student, I’d become quite accustomed to eating at places that didn’t exactly look like a Michelin-starred restaurant but still served good food. One of my favorite kebab joints was literally a hole in the wall where the owners would run a spinning fan out one of the windows as an HVAC system.
When we walked in and the wafting aroma of pizza floated to my nostrils my stomach began to rumble. Violet looked around uncomfortably, and I grinned. There was nothing on this menu that was going to suit her tastes, that was for sure.
Behind the counter was a skinny looking youth of about eighteen years who looked like an extra slice of pizza or four wouldn’t do him any harm, and a balding man yelling on the phone in a foreign language–maybe Hindi?–while waving his hands around. Three small tables with chairs lined the other side of the room, along with a fridge full of coke cans and bottles. Next to the counter was a long heated area displaying the pizzas on offer today; I had a choice between what looked like Hawaiian, pepperoni and mystery meat, since nothing was signed.
“What can I get you?” the young guy asked, barely able to conceal his boredom.
“I’ll have a slice of pepperoni, and she’ll have a Hawaiian,” I replied, ignoring Violet’s scowl.
The youth haphazardly tossed two slices onto a paper plate and stuck them in the oven. “Oh, and I’ll grab a bottle of diet coke,” I said as I took my wallet out to pay for it. The kid handed me back my change, and a moment later the pizzas as well. Violet and I sat at one of the tables across from one another as I dug into my slice. Violet just stared at hers like it was a plateful of Ebola.
“You know,” I told her, “you’re actually going to have to eat it eventually. I would imagine this isn’t your first assignment where you’ve had to stake out a cheap eatery, and it would look suspicious if you didn’t.”
“You are enjoying this,” Violet told me as she picked up her fork and looked dejectedly at the pizza. “You are enjoying the fact that I am about to put into my body a slice of pizza that is comprised almost entirely of processed food. There are only empty calories here.”
“Delicious, delicious empty calories,” I replied, picking up and taking a big bite of my slice. Violet took her plastic knife and fork and cut herself a small piece of her pizza, sighed, and put it in her mouth.
“Admit it, it doesn’t taste that bad.”
&nb
sp; “It tastes like a shortened lifespan and increased risk of future health problems. You, as a doctor, should know that.”
“Fine, we can stop at a smoothie place or whatever other hippie place is nearby after this so you can wash the slice down with something green,” I teased.
“First we need to find out why Lily sent us here, however.”
“Yeah, I have no idea what that three, six, nine thing refers to.”
“Nor do I, not at the moment.”
“Great. So we’re going to be sitting here for hours.”
As it turned out, however, we only had to wait around forty minutes. A few other customers had come in, but this time a tall man with a shaved head but nice jeans and shirt came in.
“Hey, Dragan,” the kid greeted him. “The usual?”
“As always, thanks,” Dragan replied. As he lifted his hand I noticed his forearm had a weird tattoo: it was a cross, with four sideways crowns in each quadrant to the side of it. Violet smiled at me and nodded slightly. This was obviously our guy, I just had no idea why she thought that. We got up and left as Dragan was paying, and as soon as we got back into the street Violet took two cigarettes out of her purse, lit them, and handed one to me.
“Seriously? You’re complaining that you had to eat a slice of pizza and you’re going to smoke?” I asked, and Violet grinned.
“No, I am not so much a hypocrite as that. I am simply going to hold it, to make it look like we are smoking. Do the same.”
I leaned against the wall, tapping the unsmoked ash on the cigarette to the ground, when a minute later Dragan came back out of the pizza shop and headed toward the Old Street underground station.
“How do you know he’s the one we’re supposed to follow?” I asked Violet quietly as we strolled behind him, far enough that we wouldn’t be noticed but close enough not to lose him.
“Dragan is a common name in Serbia, and did you see his tattoo?”
“Yeah, that cross with the weird crowns.”
“That thing you call a ‘cross with the weird crowns’ is a Serbian national symbol. The man is Serbian. As soon as I saw him, I realized where Lily’s riddle came from. It is a quote commonly attributed to Nikola Tesla, a Serbian. If you only knew the magnificence of the three, six and nine, then you would have a key to the universe.”
“Ohhh, so the key to the riddle was waiting for the Serbian guy to show up, and follow him.”
“Exactement. Now we will see where he goes.”
Dragan did in fact make his way to the underground station. With the influx of people, I found it a lot more difficult to keep track of him; a few times when people randomly stepped in front of me I lost track of him completely, but Violet kept a steady pace and when we finally got on a train I spotted him at the other end of the same carriage.
“You should be on that show Mantracker,” I told Violet, who laughed.
“I have a lot of experience in following people. Many are much better at spotting someone following them than Dragan, we are lucky. He is an easy mark.”
Our easy mark got off the train two stops later at St Pancras, and changed to the Piccadilly Line, getting off at Piccadilly Circus. Being in Central London now, it was a lot easier to follow him without the risk of him catching us; Shaftesbury Avenue was a lot busier than Rivington Street had been. He continued along there until he made his way to Rupert Street. Halfway down the first block, Dragan suddenly disappeared.
I stopped to have a look around for him, but Violet took me by the elbow. “Keep going,” she said, and I did as she asked automatically.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“In the building to our left there is a small entrance. That is where he went; it is a night club.”
“Are we going to go in there?” I asked as we walked past it.
“In good time, yes. However, seeing as it is barely two o’clock in the afternoon, there will be no one in the club apart from staff, and we would have no reason to be there either. We will be much better off returning at night and pretending to be patrons. So, for now, we go home and we do nothing. But make sure you have clothes that make you look like a prostitute. You will need them tonight.”
I giggled at Violet’s weird attempt at telling me to dress a bit sluttily as we walked back toward the tube. Since we were only a few stops away from Gloucester Road station, the stop closest to our homes, we opted to hop back onto a train rather than try and hail a cab.
I couldn’t help but notice that today every headline in every paper mentioned the Ebola threat.
Ebola Virus Stolen From London Hospital
Ebola on the Loose in England!
Virus Stolen From London Hospital–Terror Alert Raised
“Do you think there will be an attack anytime soon?” I asked Violet, who shrugged.
“I do not know. I do not yet know who was behind the theft. When we know that, we will know what they plan on doing with the virus. I will say that I do not believe one would go to the risks that they went to in order to steal the vials of Ebola for absolutely nothing. So in essence, yes, I think they will use the vials. But on who, where and when I have no idea.”
“Well, that wasn’t reassuring at all,” I said to myself as we boarded our train. I really, really hoped our visit to the club later that night would be fruitful. I was tired of seemingly chasing after ghosts on this case.
Chapter 13
When I got home I took Biscuit for a walk in Kensington Gardens as usual–I was all too aware that we were only steps away from Hyde Park; a road running through the middle of the green space was all that separated the two gardens. I barely noticed the people enjoying the novelty of a cat on a leash. It was partly that I’d gotten used to walking my cat around like he was a dog, but partly nerves.
Violet’s sister spent her time in practically the same park that I did. This master criminal. I shivered slightly at the realization.
When we finally got home, Biscuit plonked himself down in a ray of sunshine cascading from the window into the living room, and I lay down on the couch while taking out my iPad. I started out by typing in the name Lily Hunter. I’d expected there to be a bunch of news articles about her involvement in crimes, or even just a hint that she was involved in them.
Instead, all I found were articles about Lily Hunter the widow whose husband drowned in Cyprus while they were on their honeymoon. Intrigued, I clicked on one of the articles, dated July 21st, 2006.
What was supposed to be the happiest week of a young couple’s life turned into tragedy yesterday as James Hunter, 32, known for his real estate firm which he sold last year for over 600 million pounds, drowned on his honeymoon in Cyprus. His distraught bride, Lily, 23, called police from her hotel, telling them her husband went out for a swim that morning and never returned. His body was recovered by divers two hours later.
At this time the Cypriot Police do not suspect foul play.
I finished reading the article, and, fascinated, read three others. The facts all seemed to correspond in each. It seemed that after eating a light breakfast with his wife at one of the resort restaurants, James Hunter went out for a quick swim, which he did every morning. Only unlike the other mornings, he never returned. A couple of the trashier tabloids implied that perhaps his wife had something to do with his death, but no more than that. They also pointed out the age difference, and implied that perhaps Lily Hunter, née Despuis, had married the man for his money.
Having met the woman, I could absolutely see her murdering a man for his money. One of the articles I’d clicked on suddenly had a video appear, and my curiosity got the better of me. I pressed play.
First there was a shot of the beautiful resort, not far from Nicosia, with crystal-clear waters just off the shore. Then, the video cut to a reporter in front of the hotel who reported the basics of the case, and turned to a shot of Lily Hunter. She looked even younger than her twenty-three years, with her black hair framing her face. Her dark eyes were surrounded by red from crying as
she broke down in front of the camera completely.
“Oh James! I loved him so much. And to think, I wanted to go into town. He begged me to let him have his little swim before we left. Oh mon dieu. What am I going to do now?”
She covered her face in her hands as a random reporter leaned over and patted her on the back. She looked so unconfident, so unlike the Lily Hunter I’d met that morning, I wondered if she was putting on a show for the cameras, or if she had simply changed quite a bit in the over ten years that had passed since her husband’s death.
Eventually I decided that the mystery of Lily Hunter was going to remain a mystery for a while longer. Maybe forever. I didn’t like her. To be honest, if I never had to see her again, I’d have been perfectly all right with that.
Letting out a sigh of frustration, I got up and made my way to the kitchen. Opening my fridge I was pleasantly surprised to find a bundle of grapes, which I put into a bowl as I tapped away on the counter. I was agitated, but I did know why. There was someone out there with vials of the Ebola virus, and the chances were almost zero that they had good intentions. I knew there was nothing I could do until tonight to fix it, but that still didn’t stop my brain from wanting to act now!
In an attempt to stop myself from thinking about the virus, I looked up the speaking engagement Jake had invited me to. There was a page for it on the UCL Medical School website–Jake had texted me earlier in the day to let me know that was where the speech was happening–in one of their lecture halls.
As I read the overview I felt a pang of… something. I wasn’t really quite sure what. Regret? Sadness? I’d spent most of my adult life working toward being an orthopedic surgeon. That was now completely off the table. I knew that. No matter how many motivational Facebook posts my mom tagged me in, no matter how many times I read ‘fall seven times get up eight’, the fact of the matter was, I had lost five percent of the function in my right hand. And that was enough that I was never going to be able to operate on anyone.
Whacked in Whitechapel Page 7